Update on Project Prometheus

Aglassis writes "It appears that NASA is not backing down from their nuclear space initiative. Project Prometheus has recently started a new web page (under JPL) and NASA is finishing up a period of public comment (last session today). Currently Northrop Grumman is contracted to begin preliminary design of the spacecraft until 2008 for NASA (the reactor will be built by the Department of Energy's Division of Naval Reactors--the folks who control all US submarine and aircraft carrier nuclear reactors). Early specs are that it will be 60 meters long, have a 30,000 kg mass, use a 100 KW reactor using Brayton cycle gas turbines, be powered by ion thrusters with a 7000 second specific impulse, and have a science payload of 1500 kg. Early mission plans for Prometheus 1 (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter) indicate that the spacecraft would orbit Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa individually, and perhaps have a lifespan of about 20 years."

Comments

Re:Thank god

[puzzled]

Coal is somewhere between one and thirteen parts per million Uranium. You can google and check the math but these numbers are not out of line:

We put twenty five *tons* of bomb grade Uranium 235 into the air each year with our current coal consumption. U235 is .72% of naturally occuring Uranium which means we're putting up about 3,500 tons of U238 as well. U238 which gets hit by neutrons from cosmic rays becomes ... Plutonium.

http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163 -9 7/FS-163-97.html

Don't tell any tree hugging antinuclear activists, but our most common form of electricity production will *always* produce more radiation than the most horrific nuclear fuel accident. Changes the picture a bit, doesn't it?

Its all cold war BS that we don't have nuke powered space vessels to take advantage of the 1,000X energy density improvement over chemical fuels. I hope this comes to an end soon ... I want fast Mars shots before I'm too senile to appreciate them.

Re:Thank god

[SidV]

Thank Jeff that when you take a small mass of radioactive material that gives off lethal amounts of radiation and spread it over a large geographic area you cannot get a lethal exposure.

In other words the background radiation of the debris area was less than the natural background radiation of natural Uranium rich areas like Western Africa, or in fact many parts of Canada, which have higher radiation levels than the debris area.